Life Flashes
by MMB
Summary: That last moment. Character death.


Life Flashes  
by MMB  
  
He had so often dreamed - or actually, had nightmares - about this moment, knowing that his was a damned soul for all of the things that he had done or not done or stood aside and allowed to be done by others. Despite his total recanting of all religious beliefs or practice, he nevertheless fully expected to be standing at the foot of the throne of Judgement, hearing his fate - his term in Hell - spelled out for all of eternity to mark.   
  
He had long heard it claimed that just before the moment of death, one's life would flash before one's eyes. But that wasn't happening. That, it seemed was his blessing - or his curse - he couldn't tell.  
  
Instead, it seemed as if time itself were expanding out in all directions and then losing all meaning - as if the Universe itself were stretching out in all directions, tinted by the colors of the rainbow and by colors never even dreamed of by any artist - blinding, stimulating, soothing. That rainbow, that dome of color and light and sound and taste and smell and touch was moving and modulating and undulating until each movement, each shift, became a memory. With a jolt, he realized that he now was gifted with more than ample opportunity to fully explore and understand the experience encased within that memory in a way he'd been denied before.   
  
=FLASH=  
  
He was a boy, sitting on his grandmother's knee with his brother on the other knee, listening to her soft and musical voice retelling tales of her childhood in Aix en Provence, smelling the wonderful and savory smells coming from his mother's kitchen as she baked for the holidays. He could smell the soft scent of powder and parfum that had been as familiar a part of his grandmother as her loving face...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
He could see Jarod, sitting at his laptop in yet another seedy hotel room, typing away madly. Jarod, who had run away from him, from the Centre, from what they'd done to him, from what they might do to him - and yet never strayed too very far away. He could hear the sound of that low, gentle voice as it worked on the information for his next Pretend. And he could see how his dark chocolate eyes suddenly widened in alarm when he heard "You have mail" and clicked on the message. Jarod? Crying? His Pretender was hurting...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
He could see Jarod, but he was a small boy just finishing up the Erector set model of the Empire State Building. Jarod, just brought into the Centre as an orphan, wandered brazenly up to the one-way glass as if at a mere four years old he knew that it was an observation window rather than a mirror and then stated very matter-of-factly "I'm finished..."  
  
=FLASH=  
  
He was back inside the barracks in Dachau, his feet in shoes three sizes too big for him but packed with rags to keep them from causing blisters, his body garbed in dirty, ragged, striped clothing. From a bunk just a meter or so away, he could hear his brother coughing desperately - Herr Doktor Krieg had told him that Jakob was ill and might not make it through the night. He moved to the other bunk, despite having been ordered to stay away, and clasped his fevered brother to his chest desperately...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
The rainbow dome over him, beneath him, surrounding him, cracked and crazed with impossibly bright bolts of lightning that ripped randomly in all directions, shattering and then reconstructing. The energies of Life surrounded him and buffetted him from all sides, now gentle, now excrutiating, always changing...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
His body was surrounded by soft, clean, fresh-smelling sheets, and along his entire body he felt the sensation of warm skin caressing him. Michelle lay next to him, breathing hard from their recent amorous activity, and reached out her hand to him. He moved...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
A tall young man glanced over his shoulder curiously - with a face that so reminded him of his own and his brother's at that age. What would Nicholas think if he knew that his REAL father were watching him from an anonymous car window...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
In his hand, the card shook slightly. He could see the care that had gone into the drawing of the two figures standing side by side. And slowly he let it drop into the trashcan so that he could no longer read the words "Happy Father's Day"...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
He was staring through a rain-streaked windshield as a tree limb broke loose from above, and he twisted the wheel, knowing from the sick feeling in his stomach that it was too little too late...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
Miss Parker's face split open with soft, genuinely amused laughter as Broots made some inane remark about the Monopoly thimble she held in her hand. She'd never been more beautiful...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
A young boy and a young girl approached each other, separated only by the glass wall between them. A hand went up, hesitantly met and matched by another...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
The rainbow swirled, shattered, modulated. Slowly he realized that it was getting easier. The pain he felt, the love he felt, the worry he felt - those feelings amplified when he tried to hold onto the memory. His whole life was spread in front of him in shifting and swirling color and sound, shape and taste and smell and emotion - all of it pushing him helplessly this way and that.  
  
And yet...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
He lay there, his body broken and empty. He could hear the sound of Miss Parker's torn sobbing and she stood over him, hand over her mouth in shock and grief. Broots' lovely hazel eyes had that tragic expression in them that told him that the technician was trying very hard not to sob as hard as his boss was...  
  
=FLASH=  
  
So much pain, and yet... no pain...  
  
Jacob...  
  
Granmere...  
  
Jarod...  
  
Broots...  
  
Catherine...  
  
Angelo...  
  
Nicholas...  
  
Papa...  
  
Miss Parker...  
  
Mama...  
  
Michelle...  
  
The rainbow was thinning, his hold on the pains and triumphs and tragedies and wonders and horrors that were his life was loosening. How much easier it was when he let go of such things. How much easier it was to fully appreciate the intricacies of the collective when he wasn't holding desperately to the individual pieces that were his life.  
  
How easy...  
  
It was a curse. And a blessing.  
  
  
Feedback, please: mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


End file.
